Two village one mafia is dead. Or should be.

As you probably know, Inventions Mafia has recently ended. It had a large number of problems, including inactive players, imbalanced teams, and too much of a "timezone factor" in determining lynches. The two-village-one-mafia format has several problems with it that make it worse than the one-village-two-mafia and multi-team formats, including becoming one-sided early, reducing player involvement, making idling more of a problem, creating kingmaker positions, and making timezones and stealth lynches more important.

First, whichever team in a two-village game wins the Day 1 lynch immediately gains the upper hand and can destroy the other team. Once one village is reduced in numbers, that village becomes powerless in the lynch barring a mislynch or mafia assistance. The team that wins the Day 1 lynch will become further and further ahead.

To balance this out, the mafia and wolf have to support the team that lost the lynch. However, most leaders of the losing village would be reluctant to share any information with the mafia, and the mafia would not want to share its information either in case the losing village started winning again. Also, the losing village could reveal the mafia to the winning village, causing the winning village to lynch off the mafia rather than the losing village. Also, the mafia's votes are usually enough to swing the lynch from one village to the other. Whichever team the majority of the mafia and neutrals vote with on Day 1 will probably end up winning, putting the mafia and neutrals in a kingmaker position.

Since the lynches in two-village games are usually very close, timezones are much more important than in one-village games. The team with more players who are awake during the day is the team most likely to win the Day 1 lynch, effectively making the game decided by timezones. Stealth votes cast by the mafia to swing the vote from one team to the other are also more of a problem in two-village games because there are so many more opprotunities for them to happen.

In two-village-one-mafia games, fewer players are heavily involved in the game, and the consequences of idling are worse. In a normal one-village game, all eight mafia members, the village leader, the backup village leader, and any neutrals will all be actively involved in the game, i.e. not just taking orders. In a two-village game, one mafia faction is replaced by a village leader and a backup leader, reducing the number of involved, strategizing players by two. The consequences of an idling player are also worse. In a one-village game, idling mafia members can have their night PMs sent in by teammates, but since there are fewer mafia members in two-village games, there are fewer opprotunities to fix idling problems like that. Also, villages need every player in lynches, and even a few idlers can ruin a team on Day 1.

In conclusion, do not make any more two-village-one-mafia games. The format has been tested and is not as good as the one-village-two-mafia or multi-faction formats. There are multiple flaws that make two-village games less balanced and less interesting to play.

The first few games where this was tried were interesting, but it is becoming as stale as two mafia one village quite quickly, along with the fact that really, very few of the two village games have worked out well at all. If you don't want to host a one village two mafia game, why not try something untested, or just a simple one village one mafia game? There are so many possibilities that haven't been tested, I definitely support the point behind the OP in saying that people should take a break from hosting two village games.

Moderator

The thing is, inactivity will always be a problem, what ever the format is. Another problem was that Invention was hardly balanced, if anything, it was in the favour of the villages.

While yes, players should experiment more, they could always spice up old ideas too. Try to fix the problem of inactivity in standard if anything, be it 2v1, 1v2, multifaction, viva, allneut etc. If you can't find a way around this, every game is gonna be decided by one or more inactive players.

Now to address your points specifically:

If a village wins the first day, the mafia and the wolf will aim to even it out, so I hardly think that is a problem, the one who can overcome this stalemate and keep control wins, with the leader changing nearly everyday. And the wolf and mafia don't need info from the losing side, the votes themselves are enough indication, let's not forget the inspections of their own.

Stealth Lynches? In a two village game? It is stupid to try, the only stealth that happened was that led by the mafia, the village had 24 hours to get in votes... Not that it mattered much at that point, Thorns killed just like we thought.

You are giving day one too much of an importance, who wins day 1 usually will be off worse the next day. And players are given 48 hours, if someone can't vote within that time, without having serious reasons, should not be playing...

You really can't write this format off after only 2 games. If anything people agreed that 2 mafia one village shouldn't be played. I don't know how the other game went, but this one suffered from worse than the format problems even... Also you can always change the format more, like Amelia's Expert game, which had 3 mafias, and interesting wcs.

I think it's a bit too early to dismiss the two village faction as of right now; though, I do share most of SC's concern with how we currently been running them. I also agree that the village with less people should have some good advantage against the other village as well as the mafias and wolves as soon as they become more dominant.

Super Moderator

I agree that 1v2 (as I like to call it) isn't showing to be any better off than 2v1. I disagree with most other things, or rather, while they may be true, I don't believe they are what makes 1v2 not ideal. The kingmaker problem is not of this game alone, it goes for every game. You might think it comes into effect earlier, but think about it: in 2v1, the evening out starts right away with the mafias usually trying to off the village since if they don't, the village will win.

as the imbalanced wolf in inventions mafia i feel i have something to say about this from a wolf's perspective

i had to continuously kill borings throughout the entire game to prevent an imbalance of power, which wouldn't be good for me. meanwhile, the weapons were offing key targets for them, and gathering more and more information while i was left in the dark and forced to kill borings. if i chose to kill weapons, the borings would maintain a numbers advantage and eventually lynch me. i feel that the wolf is, or will be put into a kingmaker position in these types of games. in a 2v1 game, the wolf is a more powerful force, as the number of kills floating around allow him to pick his own targets, as the chance of a crossfire and mafia lynch is much higher.

What if we had a game with more of the Simpsons factions from Simpsons mafia, that could either win with their team OR win if only Simpsons were alive at the end. The most obvious consequence of this is that you wouldn't know if you could really trust somebody or not. The trouble is, I can't see games like that becoming more than a novelty.

Moderator

Moderator

Although in FTM, it wasn't solely because they had fewer players, it was because they took the piss uniting and started off getting moled by the mafia. However, I do agree it is a not a good solution.

The problem is, I can't see any possible solution where it won't end in the 3rd faction (or neutrals) will always end up playing kingmaker to stop the other two factions gaining too much majority or power. If anyone can offer a good way to stop this then I feel it's just a nice idea, but one that doesn't work.

Although in FTM, it wasn't solely because they had fewer players, it was because they took the piss uniting

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And why didn't we unite so quickly? Because we were in the smaller faction, and the leader would be lynched - neverending circle.

I'd like to throw out the idea (don't jump on me here, I'm thinking it up as I go) of a five faction game with each faction having a simple last-faction-standing wc. This still leads to kingmaker but hell everything leads to kingmaker.

Even though I admit Fuck the Mafia had an imbalance towards The Men with 99 Problems, I still have 1 thing for my defense: Billy and dak, aka Silencer and persuader.

Yes, they decided to use it for killing. But, if they wanted, they could have negated a vote away, and (if lucky), gain 2 votes in their favor. This would have gained them majority or at least tied the votes if I remember correct, either or. But then Agape moled them and gave like half of them to LN, and the rest we know.

Moderator

King Maker: I can't think of more than two situations to avoid this problem, without some big decisions. One is 1v1 no wolves, clearly there we have no king maker, but it's luck based completely, and p stupid even, it won't happen. The other option is to balance the roles while the game is still running, this is not an option, not only will no host be ready to do this, but it removes the planning element, since roles change nearly every day.... Though I had some ideas based on this one, it's completely different(pre-planed balancing, won't work on a long run, but it makes an interesting game, sad that I will never host it). Balancing like this also means, it doesn't matter how good someone plays, if they fail to remove a team, they still have to face an enemy as strong as them...

Now the big thing about king maker is, that players usually aim for one, without a king maker, a team usually has hard time taking over another team that has a lead, they neither can waste time on killing of the king maker nor can they let the other team do it. Now King Maker is completely avoided if a team get's a huge enough lead to win even if all turn on them, but this shouldn't happen, at least if all teams aim to win.

The only option left is, to remove players who are unable to win, problem is, who is to decide this? It also brings up the question of the wolf role, since it is nearly always viewed as either broken or sure loser.

Since I'm sure changing formats won't fix any of the big issues of the game, I'd rather be looking for effective ways to avoid king makers, fix the inactivity issue, wolf question(not as big of a problem, but it always has been such a chaos role) and things I surely have forgotten.

I honesty think it's best to have uneven factions (number-wise) so that it wouldn't even come to kingmaker. One would act as more of a 'village' while the other should still have some ways to take advantage of the situation like persuaders. A bit like FTM, but honestly this seems the best format, for me at least.

Moderator

I honesty think it's best to have uneven factions (number-wise) so that it wouldn't even come to kingmaker. One would act as more of a 'village' while the other should still have some ways to take advantage of the situation like persuaders. A bit like FTM, but honestly this seems the best format, for me at least.

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How does that remove the king maker situation? It just means that instead of balance by numbers and roles, it will be just by roles, since the numbers are all different. Teams will still be ganged up on, weakened, and put into the king maker position. It's not like it's new either, in 2v1 the mafias were many times uneven too number wise. If it didn't fix 2v1 then it won't fix anywhere else(and if it is about uneven numbers, MGS is the better example.)